The Alex King Series A BATEMAN (summer reading list txt) 📖

universally unthreatening way to transport a weapon. Armed police officers had filed out of the lead vehicle. King raised his left hand, raised his right to his waist, his arm outstretched. He considered dropping the weapon altogether, Cornish armed police didn’t get out much and the sight of a man with a FAMAS walking towards them may prove too much to take in and get those trigger fingers twitching.

The thud happened a second before the white light. King felt it vibrate in his internal organs – a wave of pressure and nauseous unsteadiness. His entire equilibrium off kilter, for just hundredths of a second. The secondary noise, the immense explosion left his ears ringing and his eyes momentarily blinded by white light. He dropped onto his knees, involuntarily, then rolled as his senses caught up. His senses were acute; the police were not so experienced. And they were closer.

The glass blew out of the windows and showered onto the armed officers in the driveway. Splinters of wood and pieces of rubble and what was left of the interior of the cottage smashed into the vehicles, and personnel who were lucky enough to be near their vehicles ducked down for cover. Some were luckier than others, who bore the brunt of it upon their heads.

There was a scene of confusion as police officers were torn between keeping cover or tending to their colleagues, and the chain of command was lost in the ensuing panic. King got back to his feet. The cottage was gone. The whole façade was open, and the roof had dropped four or five feet. Fire had broken out and the flames licked at the ceiling, the wooden staircase and fixtures. There was a loud popping noise and King figured it was the first of the four live .357 magnum rounds cooking off in the heat. One of the armed police officers returned a volley of fire at the cottage and prompted two more to do the same, as the burning ammunition fired back at them. One of the armed officers, King presumed him to be the team leader, shouted to ‘cease fire’ and after a few seconds of confusion, the armed officers started to tend to their wounded colleagues.

King looked at the burning cottage in dismay. He had seen explosions like it before. Used them too. A secondary incendiary of phosphorous, burning at over one-thousand degrees Celsius and propelled outwards both by the detonation and gaseous backdraft from the initial ignition of the incendiary. A bomb of three parts. Specialist equipment.

King searched the chaos for a senior officer, he guessed that the man in his fifties, dressed in plain attire, was his best bet. The man was of medium height and weight and wore a drab raincoat. He looked ruffled, but King would bet he hadn’t looked much better before the explosion. He was speaking into a mobile phone, standing over the body of the gunman and looking like his world had shifted on its axis and he would never get it back. Some of the armed police officers nearer to the burning building were hobbling away, helped by officers who had been further away and protected by the vehicles. King quickly ascertained that there had been no fatalities, and the paramedics at the ambulance were busy organising a makeshift triage.

King walked out from the darkness of the field and walked up to the officer. “Who’s in charge?” he asked.

The man spun around, recoiled when he saw the assault rifle, but the decision-making part of his brain soon discounted King as a threat. Maybe it had been the relaxed posture. “I am,” he said. “Detective Chief Inspector Trevarth. You must be the MI5 guy.”

King nodded. “Shame you didn’t catch the brief.”

“I was informed of a lethal shooting,” he said. “I’m not putting my officers at risk turning up unarmed.”

“Yes, I can see they’re worth their weight in lead,” King replied sardonically. “Nobody could foresee the explosion, but I’m surprised they all rocked up in one vehicle and didn’t set up a cordon.”

“They didn’t know what to expect.”

“Then they should have been wary,” King mused. “Or I suggest they knew there was no threat, as you were briefed by my control, and no doubt briefed them in turn, and were merely a show of force because MI5 are operating on your patch and you don’t like it.”

“The police don’t work for MI5.”

“They do tonight,” King said. “And the last time I checked, the boys in blue work for the British government. So tonight, by default, you’ve gone against orders and created your very own shit storm. All you needed to do was dispatch a couple of detectives, or come in person alone, supervise the Home Office coroners to take control of the body and have a run through the Official Secrets Act,” King paused. “Familiarise yourself with national security protocols.”

DCI Trevarth looked dumbly at King, then glanced back at the officers gathering around the ambulance and damaged police vehicles. “I…” he hesitated and looked back at King anxiously. “Shit, what do I do now?”

“Damage control, you mean?”

The detective nodded. He looked up and stared at the blue strobes of the approaching convoy of fire engines and ambulances. He shrugged. “I suppose.”

King looked over his head. It was getting worse. Two lights approached in the sky. King looked back at the detective. “Get two officers into the field. A torch in each hand. Position them twenty-metres from the hedges, fifty-metres apart. Get them to hold each torch at arms-length and kneel down.”

“But…”

“But nothing, Trevarth,” King paused. “For the moment, you have a pension. Do what I say, and you may just keep it.”

15

 

“Well, it’s a cluster fuck, this little lot, isn’t it?”

King waved a hand towards the burning cottage. Two fire engines, or tenders, were spraying the flames with hoses, there was